Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

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Re: Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy: Alternate Universe Edition

Postby outcast » Sun Jul 10, 2016 10:28 am

So it's been a slightly frustrating start, I feel my study sessions don't have the intensity I want them to have. That said, I have done good work every day, and today I have completed the HSK 6上, as I had wished to do. Tomorrow I will zero in on finishing Boya Book 6, and then do a 2nd pass of the whole book over the next week. I will then start with Book 7, and do quick reviews of the prior books' reading passages and grammar.

Tonight I will finally begin to read "Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A practical Guide, 2nd edition" by Claudia Ross and Jing-heng Sheng Ma, Routledge. I want to get another angle on the language, and with the language features grouped not by lesson, difficulty level, or usefulness as in most textbooks, but by linguistic category. For example, this book is divided in chapters like "Expressing simultaneous conditions", "Expressing conditions", " taking about habitual actions", "refusals", etc, etc... This way, I would expect to find most if not all the major patterns used to express these situations juxtaposed in the same section, and I can then carefully compare them. Since I have gone through most courses up to advanced level by now, I would expect most of the patterns the book will discuss are already familiar. This will make it easy to compare them, and this is why I have waited all this time to read this book (I bought it early LAST year!). I hope this will really make me see the language in another way and give me a few "aha!" moments.

As soon as I am done with Book 6 I am getting on Kubler's Chinese program, and on extensive reading.
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The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:46 pm

I am working on quickly but thoroughly finishing Book 6 of Boya.

I think my decision to start to learn Korean will turn to be positive for my Chinese learning. Until April or so I was very dedicated to Chinese, after that, I felt my efforts were less than full, while I did study quite a lot, I felt I procrastinated more than before. Ever since making up my mind to study Korean, I have noticed my energy level for study jump noticeably last couple of days, which gives more intensity to my sessions. I have also realized I once again have learned to "value" time: of late I felt as if part of my procrastination was the fact that I was ONLY studying Chinese, so I had "all day" to do some task. So I let some time slip. Now suddenly I have a new language to tackle, every day I will devote an hour to 90 minutes on it. This makes the time studying Chinese more valuable. This bit of time pressure is good I believe. It may be the that I will benefit from multi-language study synergy as I did when I studied French and German.

I'm happy thus far where things are going, even if today I got frustrated a Chinese lady did not understand what I said. I think she was half asleep though.
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"I can speak wonderfully and clearly in zero languages, and can also fluently embarrass myself in half a dozen others."

The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Thu Jul 14, 2016 12:49 am

With my renewed intensive listening and reading, the language has slowed down once again, and the reading passages don't look like a wall of intimidating characters, as long as they are common use characters. But paradoxically, I have had three people last two days NOT understand when I speak on the "first pass", and had to repeat. I am not sure what is going on and is perplexing. I think I may be trying to speak too fast and my words come out mushy and unclear. I think. I have been trying to sound more natural and not so mechanical when I speak, maybe I am just not so ready yet.

A few weeks ago I made a bet with a former Level 6 student that by the time next semester approaches, both of us would have nailed down all 2,500 vocabulary of the HSK 6, AND writing the characters. It is a crazy bet and I don't think either of us really expect to meet it, but I don't like to lose so I will use it as extra-motivation and go for it. The catch is my "opponent" is Korean, and so maybe they have a slight natural edge with the vocabulary.

I am done with lessons 5, 6, and 9 of Boya level 6, I and working through the VERY long lesson 10 as I finish the other lessons. Today I will continue doing this and do lesson 7. Last two days I did some tutoring of English so I did not have the entire day, I hope today I can get quite a bit completed.
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"I can speak wonderfully and clearly in zero languages, and can also fluently embarrass myself in half a dozen others."

The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Thu Jul 28, 2016 2:03 am

So the last couple of weeks have been up and down, the last 4 to 5 days rather unproductive because of personal reasons, and last week I could not eat much in the way of food and for most of that week all I did was sleep during the day, I had absolutely not energy. Last two weeks where also busy gathering my materials to study Korean. In between these two unproductive periods I have had four to five days of solid work going over HSK 6 vocabulary, and I finished Boya book 6.

Having started to study Korean to some extent on Monday, I have seen already some of that good synergy spill to my Chinese studies. I have as mentioned in earlier posts re-started Basic Spoken Chinese as a good way to review and drill everyday Chinese and brush up on grammatical and usage points that may have become less than optimal in my speech (for example, I tend to overuse 吧 when I speak, as well as 完全, reviewing when it is appropriate to use these should help polish my output). I am also refreshed on other usages I may be under-using like questions with 是不是 for one.

But the most important thing I have noticed is, since currently my sole focus with Korean is its phonetics, this has rekindled my interest in Chinese (Mandarin) phonetics, and my other languages too. So I have been doing tons of review on IPA, phonetic terms, and the phonology of the various languages and in particular Mandarin. I have remembered many things and actually learned new ones (like the 2-2-3 or 3-2-3 tone 3 general rule, which comes very handy and am consciously trying to apply). I am also taking care to pronounce neutral syllables more naturally according to the environment the occur in. Finally, I am going through my consonants and vowels to make sure their point of articulation is as close as possible to the descriptions in various literature, AS WELL as seeing how they actually sound and if they sound like what native Mandarin speakers would say. In particular I am making sure all my dentals are really dental, near the teeth, and not alveolar like English (t,n,l,s, etc.).

I would like to finish the review of HSK 6 list in the next week, and progress through BSC. I need more extensive reading and to start Boya book 7.
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"I can speak wonderfully and clearly in zero languages, and can also fluently embarrass myself in half a dozen others."

The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Thu Jul 28, 2016 5:42 am

I have done a major update to my language profile. Major changes are explained thus below:

1. I keep my B2-range languages of French, German, and Portuguese at Basic Fluency, even though I know if I start speaking them right now, particularly Portuguese, B1 at best will come out. Of course I am referring to the fact that as of this moment if I speak these languages they will be quite rusty, but if I speak them for a week and have massive input I have no doubt that a degree of fluency would return rather quickly, to near B2 and above. So I keep them but make it clear my output at first would completely not reflect this level.

2. After a long time thinking about it, I have decided to reflect my real status with Italian, which is "completely dormant". I can't speak it right now, but I did learn Italian for over a year with an Italian teacher when I was 11 and 12. Then I learned by myself at ages 14 and 15 with Living Language course. Additionally, I was exposed to some Italian from my now passed-away grandmother and to a lesser extend with phrases from my dad. Finally, I lived in Argentina for some time so this also further exposed me to some aspects of the language. For all these reasons, I believe that when I decide to revive the language, it will roar back lightning speed. My pronunciation should also be pretty good. So I would not really be learning the language, just reactivating. Thus I have in a sense "upgraded" the level of this language to reflect my past experience. I decided that studying a language at 11 and 12 is just as valid as studying it in your 20s and later.

3. I have formally added Korean as a "study" language, since I began to do formal work in it last Monday, July 25th, 2016. So for the time being it shares the status with Mandarin Chinese, since I can't bring myself to upgrade this language to "basic fluency" for now. I feel I am at a high B1 level overall in speaking, but not B2 and not a somewhat solid B2 at that, so until I feel this is the case it is no go on any change in status.

4. I have changed the reference of Mandarin Chinese from 中文 (a generic reference to the Chinese language and writing, technically more the writing part), to 汉语 (language of the Han), which used to mean Mandarin more exclusively but now also means "Chinese". I know this is all confusing, but I did not want to put in 普通话 (Common Speech, or standard Mandarin), because it lacks history and tradition IMO. The reason I have changed it is because I have now added Cantonese to my "wish list", even though I use the vague 粤语, which just means the languages of the Yue family, and is not as commonly used as 广东话, which more accurately translates as "Cantonese".

5. I have upgraded Bahasa Indonesian (a standard of Malay) to plan to learn. At some point in the medium future I want to do some study of the language, but after Hindi and Korean, any languages after that will be strictly hobbies with no time pressure or expectations of reaching X level.

6. I have added Swahili and Bengali to my long-term wishlist. Given the work I still have ahead of me in a bunch of other languages, its a big far off in the future for either of them. But that is why it is a Wish List. :)

And with this out of the way, back to the dirty work of us language worms...
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"I can speak wonderfully and clearly in zero languages, and can also fluently embarrass myself in half a dozen others."

The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:16 pm

I have finished my 2nd go through the entire 2,500 HSK 6 vocabulary. This second time many more words were quickly recognized: this is both because my first go through was a couple of months before so I had two months of study and exposure to Chinese, so I saw many of the words again in other lessons or contexts. Of course having gone through the list one time surely soaked up some words too. So now with a review done, I am sure many more of the words will stick. I will now wait a few days and then go through the list again, but this time only focusing on words that I don't recall at all. Words I know and words I "kinda" know will be tossed aside, and I will mark the entries where all I draw is a blank. I will make a reduced list of these and then go over them, maybe making up sentences or finding sentences where the words are used.

After this tomorrow I finally will start my grand review of Basic and Intermediate Spoken Chinese. It has a total of 24 units, I got to about unit 14 or 15. I will review the many cultural and grammar notes, and really focus on the drills and oral exercises, paying special attention to sentence patterns and sentence intonation and no longer to syllable intonation (since for the most part tones are automatic now with basic vocabulary). I want to sound more natural and also become completely automatic when it comes to the basic Chinese structures, so I will drill extensively.

I will also start Boya Book 7 as brand new material, I will give an hour a day in the morning for this task.

In the Evening I will focus on the Spoken Chinese series, doing a quick review of vocab and grammar and then listening to the audios, maybe doing some shadowing.

I will continue to do extensive listening of the news, which is really helping. I will also finally really pick up the extensive reading since I want to see how many HSK6 words come up in random texts that I can recognize while the words are fresh in my mind.

This is it with Mandarin, I need to go all out with massive input, extensive and some intensive, and review a lot. And go through new material to stimulate harder structures in the mind, but at a much slower pace than before. I only have a a few advanced books to go and still 5+ months to go through them, plus I want to leave a couple of books for post-China period. In short, if I will reach a solid B2, the road begins right now.
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The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Fri Aug 05, 2016 9:55 pm

So just as I want to get off the ground I am grounded again (got sick again with some sort of cold/allergy/sinus). I did do some light studying but not the grand plans I set about. I have gotten solid rest and I am going to get up early to get off to a good start.

Listening is in an odd phase where at times I still get lost when the topic is not completely familiar, or feel tired. But if the topic is something I have practiced, I can understand 99%. It dawned on me the other day watching a Chinese news analyst, in a particular segment I truly understood every single word as well as the whole, and he spoke a fairly fast news-delivery style. And for the first time now I can "close my eyes" and just hear the TV set, without super amounts of concentration, and know what they are talking about and pick up details too. Those things are encouraging.

When I read it also increasingly comes fairly easy, nonetheless one or two characters stump me each time. The thing is I know I have studied them before so I hit my head. Conversely, I later see a word and remember I only studied it once months ago, and never reviewed it again, and am amazed how I could recall it (滑稽). Ultimately, reading Chinese is really a dog's task, it just takes brute force, there are no tricks for reading (learning characters maybe), but really no matter what I read about radicals, and all kinds of supposed short-cuts out there, to get quick with reading Chinese, you must read Chinese. At the end of the day "it's just practice, man!" (to quote an ex-NBA player). We're talking 'bout practice!
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The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

Snow
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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby Snow » Fri Aug 12, 2016 11:37 am

How did you learn Chinese characters? Any suggestion on how to make them stick to memory? I can't seem to break into Chinese because of the characters! :( How does one learn hundreds, if not thousands, of characters?
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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby outcast » Sun Aug 14, 2016 2:25 am

Snow wrote:How did you learn Chinese characters? Any suggestion on how to make them stick to memory? I can't seem to break into Chinese because of the characters! :( How does one learn hundreds, if not thousands, of characters?


It's hard to say. I think most people, myself included, just fumble around from trick to trick, until something seems to work... which is usually just sheer exposure! I am thinking of writing a post on my experiences here. All I can say is past the most common 500-800 characters (which I think should be learned by themselves through sheer exposure), then for the next batch of 500+ characters you can make up silly SHORT stories to remember them, for example: 借 = person BORROWS sun to grow grass, 特 = a cow owns even an inch of land is SPECIAL; some people do not like this method but I found it very effective if strategically used with certain hard to remember characters. Beyond that you should learn characters as part of words.

My gut personal feeling for a total beginner is that I would not even learn the first 300-500 characters at all, just look them up as you read. They occur so frequently that you will be forced to learn them anyway. So then I would use the story system for the next 500 characters. And from 1000 and above use the word association method. The downside of the latter is that if you see the character in isolation you are stumped. It seems character recognition in texts (where the context helps you figure out the character by figuring out what word it may mean, once you know the word that is), seems to be a different skill in the brain than seeing the character all by itself and being able to say it. I would try this:

First 500 characters: just learn them by reading your texts (and look them up as many times as you need... they will stick, they happen often enough)
Next 500-800 characters: combination of methods
1. Rote memorization with writing out practice (for the relatively simple to write characters like 内 or 仗)
2. Silly story (for characters that seem hard to stick, example 粉 = rice divided into millions of bits, e.g, POWDER; it's best if the stories are ones you make up, and the SILLIER and SHORTER, the better)
3. Let the CHARACTER teach you: this only works for the characters that are pictograms (few), and ideograms (some): 休 (person by a tree = REST); 陆 (cities, land, and mountains = CONTINENT). This requires you learn some of the radicals, I would learn the 50-80 most used ones plus any others those picture makes it obvious what it means. This will help you a lot.
4. Seer on memory: use sparingly, but if the character is too complicated to rote learn, you have no silly story, and the character wont teach you, then just STARE at it for a good minute or two, intensely. Analyze every little corner of it, over and over, and think about it's meaning. Then go back an hour later, do this again. If you do this very sparingly it works, but only one character every few hours or so.
5. There are other methods people use like color coding characters (blue if it is sad emotion, red if it is passionate, green if it is about money or finance, etc). I have used this sparingly not because I don't like it but because I am lazy... but I think it works too at least to let you remember the general category of meaning of a character.
After you are over 1000-1500 characters: I would rely more and just learning every new character with the word it occurs in (this only works with bisyllabic ones). If a new character is one-syllable, make a short sentence that exemplifies its use. At this point flashcards or some other system would probably help.
FOR PROVERBS: I would rely on spaced repetition if you like this system. DO NOT try to learn proverbs by rote, it is a total fail.

I guess what I would take from above is use as many systems as you can (as long as you like that system), and analyze each new character to decide which system will be best. It's not as much work as it seems, you can judge pretty quickly how a new character should be handled, especially after you gain some experience. The key to me is to not really on just one method, let a whole variety of methods help you.
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"I can speak wonderfully and clearly in zero languages, and can also fluently embarrass myself in half a dozen others."

The End of Language learning: 10 / 10000

Wurstmann
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Re: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

Postby Wurstmann » Sun Aug 14, 2016 7:06 am

Snow wrote:How did you learn Chinese characters? Any suggestion on how to make them stick to memory? I can't seem to break into Chinese because of the characters! :( How does one learn hundreds, if not thousands, of characters?


Learn words, not single characters out of context. If you go through a textbook you learn the most used ones automatically as you go through the lessons.
I would advise you to put words or sentences you want to learn into Anki, because that makes managing and remembering everything more convinient.
If you just want to learn to read it's not that much harder than studying a language which uses an Alphabet. Writing on the other and is much more difficult.

Here is what my Anki cards look like (they also all have tts audio):

front
back

Most of the time the definition of the word is in Chinese, I only use English in cases like this, when it's much more simple.
I simply add any word I come across when reading novels or watching TV that interests me.
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